The Scopes Trial: John Scopes, a teacher in Tennessee, was arrested and put on trial for teaching evolution in schools. Tennessee was heavily Protestant and KKK. It was on of the biggest cases of the 1920s. It was a fight between religion and science.
Prohibition: the ban of the manufacture and sale of alcohol, didn't include the banning of possession, consumption, or transportation of alcohol. 18th amendment banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. The IRS was in charge of enforcing prohibition, though it wasn't enforced very well. Prohibition caused more bars, drinking, and crime.
Flappers: women in the 1920s that had short hair, wore lots of makeup, smoked, drank, wore shorter dresses showing their calves. Women were more liberated in the 1920s and presented themselves in that way by the way they dressed and acted.
Economic Issues (1920s): people bought on credit, using money they didn't have, thinking that they would pay it back later; low interest rates encouraged people to borrow money, installment plans were introduced: people could pay off something a little bit each month, people had discretionary income: money left over to pay nonessentials, people speculated the trends of the stock market.
Dust Bowl: farmers farmed the land too much, didn't allow the soil to recover. The soil becomes infertile. Dust blows as far as the East Coast and covers houses and cars. Farmers were broke because they didn't have fertile land to grow their crops on.Causes of Dust Bowl: drought, over farming, mechanization
Agricultural Issues: the Dust Bowl affected the amount of crops that were able to be grown in the United States. Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle", which discussed the truth about the meat packing plants in the U.S.
Immigration Policies: World War I limited immigration to the U.S. The U.S. thought they could thrived without immigrants and the quota system began. Ethnic groups were limited to 2% of the count from the 1890 census. Asians were not allowed into the country at all.
Nativism: when a country favors its native people instead of its immigrants. After WWI, immigration was limited in the U.S. The United States thought they could thrive without immigrants.
Significant Literary Works (1920s): Jacob A. Ris wrote "How The Other Half Lives", a photo-essay about the large difference in social class in New York City. Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle". He went undercover in the meat packing industry to expose the truth of what was going in packaged meat. Langston Hughes wrote "The Ways of White Folks". It was with this book that Whites were first called out for the unjust treatment of Blacks.
The Great Migration: a huge population in shift in which African Americans moved from the South to the North.
Harlem Renaissance: a celebration of African American culture through art, music, and literature during the 1920s in New York City.
Sacco and Vanzetti: Italian immigrant anarchists that were charged with murder and robbery.
Labor Issues (1920s): The Railway Labor Act was passed, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate employees that joined unions. The violent Loray Mill Strike was when masked men destroyed the National Textile Workers Union building. The Child Labor Amendment was proposed, but it didn't become an amendment to the Constitution. Protesting coal miners were killed in the Columbine mine massacre.
The Red Scare: The U.S. became afraid of anything non-American, particularly foreigners. During the Palmer raids, people were jailed if they were thought to be communist or anarchist.
Schneck v. the United States: the Espionage and Sedition Acts were declared constitutional by the Supreme Court.
